September 3, 2007

Woke at 3 this morning. I’d had a turbulent dream, and it was difficult getting back to sleep. The dream was this: I was back at Hiram acting in a play. The play was being put on not in a theater, but in the woods, way over the hill at the bottom of the soccer field. It was lovely rehearsing among the trees. I think I was playing Shylock, or something like that, a good role which required an elaborate costume. One morning I woke up in a unfamiliar room. I asked a blond woman if I were going to be late for rehearsal, and she said I shouldn’t worry about that; I’d had a stroke and my understudy had taken over. I said, "Well, I can do it now. I feel fine." She said that couldn’t happen. While I was unconscious with the stroke someone had been hiking in the woods and come across a little cabin I had made for myself. The cabin contained a cot, some candles, and a large number of dirty books. I’d bought the dirty books all at once because they were cheap and I thought a forest hideaway needed books. I’d stacked them up and never read them, never paid more than a moment’s attention to what they were. But now all anyone could talk about was the guy in the theater who had all those dirty books in the woods. I went to the student union, and everyone as whispering and pointing. I couldn’t think of a way to say to them all, "It meant nothing! I never even opened them!" so I just walked on, silently.

Probably the dream has to do with JF. Today I read over the journal material that offended him so much that I deleted the blog which carried some of it into the world. My defense then was that what I said was true, in the sense of "not a lie," however odd it might appear to people with other perspectives. I would add to that now, after reading the "offending" passages, that it was also perfectly harmless. No reasonable person would have been offended, no one who had a sense of how things strike people who are not oneself, no one with a rudimentary sense of context. I went too far. I bought his point of view without looking back at the material myself. He went too far and I followed him, hoping for a friend. For some reason it never works the other way around.

Cantaria reappeared for the season last night, with a greatly enlarged roster. I was the only bass for years, and now there are seven of us. I thought I was going to resent not being singular, but the fact was that it was comforting, relaxing, a brotherhood rather than a constant solo with the attendant anxieties.

The second category 5 hurricane of a young season steams toward Honduras.

When I walked into the grocery story, Paul McCartney was singing "Let It Be" on the sound system. I burst into tears.